Back in the day, when the early Church first came to faith in Jesus as Messiah but still relied entirely on the Hebrew Scriptures as their only ‘Bible,’ gospel preaching focused on the myriad of texts fulfilled in Christ. They saw Jesus everywhere in what would become the Christian ‘Old Testament.’ Indeed, we read how Jesus himself perceived His life as woven across the whole fabric of Jewish narrative, hymnology, and prophecy (Luke 24:13-35). For decades, the continuity between the Jewish narrative and the Christian revelation was a continuous wonder of discoveries.

But by the end of the first century, believers were also noticing some disturbing discontinuities as well. They noted the disparity between the image of the Father revealed in Christ with the violent images, actions, laws and judgments associated with Yahweh on display throughout the Law, the Writings and the Prophets. It seemed impossible that the God whom Jesus called Father could be responsible for the pattern of hatred and atrocity often described in the text and ascribed to His name.

The issue was so acute that potential solutions triggered schism. Believers attempted three major contrary approaches. The Gnostics preserved the perfection of the Creator God by assigning OT destruction and retribution to lesser gods and demiurges— distortions of God’s will. They included Yahweh among this secondary, violent company. Others, like the Marcionites, could not bear the discontinuity and ultimately abandoned the OT altogether as sub-Christian and unfit for continued use as authoritative Scripture in the Church.

We live in the 21st century and see the world through a very unique perspective compared to most of human history.

We have visited the moon and seen the world from outer space. We can travel around the entire globe in a commercial airplane in just 47 hours. And yet, just a few hundred years ago, the world was still believed to be flat!

Imagine living in a world with no cars, where your day-to-day existence was constricted to a few miles and the furthest you’d ever travel was probably just a few towns over. It’s difficult to imagine how fundamentally different your perspective would be, and at this point, we’re talking about barely over 100 years ago. It becomes increasingly difficult to place ourselves in the shoes of our predecessors the further back we go.

And yet, when we open up the Bible, that’s exactly what we have to do… at least, if we hope to genuinely understand its message.

It is with this in mind that we are going to look back 3,000 years to when the author of Genesis gave us the creation story. We are going to seek to understand what the recipients of this book believed about the world and how they would have received the creation story.

How we will we accomplish this? By using the symbols and language used during this time period.

On the one hand, it can be a great tool for mobilizing your audience. Need books sold? Need a detractor harassed? Need a politician elected? By selecting your preferred outcome and predicting it in a “prophetic” manner, you can manipulate people into helping you make it happen!

But on the other hand, what if your prediction is wrong? Won’t that undermine your standing as a “prophet of God”.

Fortunately, the answer is “No”!

Believe it or not, you can get as much as 75% of your “prophetic” predictions completely wrong and remain a “prophet of God” in great standing! Even better, many “prophets” today are able to substantially increase their product revenue through recurring failed “prophecies”.

How?

Well that’s what we’re here to share with you today! We’re bringing you the complete how-to guide for prophesying future results, just in time for one of this year’s biggest events:

Editor’s Note: There is an absolute narrative often forced upon Evangelical Christians today – one that says eternal torment is the only possible afterlife for any who fail to believe in Jesus as God. This narrative is usually presented with the assumption that it has always been the sole belief of the church throughout history and that any deviations from this view are simply modern, liberal perversions of historic truth.

While we have already taken a thorough look at hell in the Bible, there is a lot more to this story, and that’s why today, we’re republishing a thorough discussion from Brad Jersak on the topic of hopeful inclusivism. Brad has a unique aptitude for making advanced scholarship accessible to the average reader, and he brings a refreshing honesty to theological discussion, happily presenting both the strengths and weaknesses in his arguments while simultaneously acknowledging viable alternatives. These exceptional qualities make him uniquely suited for a discussion of the afterlife as it relates to scripture, doctrine, and orthodoxy, and he has graciously allowed us to share his work with you today.

“That is all I ask of Orthodoxy—to permit me to hope.” — Fr. Aiden Kimel

After a decade of catechesis and struggle under the guidance of my spiritual father, Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, and godfather, David Goa, I was chrismated into the Orthodox Church in 2013. To some, the tutelage of these sages already disqualifies me, the rhetoric of unity of the Church notwithstanding. But I knew this. I proceeded with eyes wide open into the Orthodox Church despite her conflicts and dysfunctions. I proceeded because I felt drawn from my Evangelical foxhole into the harbor of Christian Orthodoxy, where I was exposed to a more Christlike God.

A key factor in the move was the assurance of some key Scriptures, catechisms and liturgies, along with a number of significant Orthodox saints, hierarchs and theologians, that Orthodoxy permits me to hope—that I could believe and teach my basic conviction (published in Her Gates Will Never Be Shut) of a humble eschatological hope, the possibility in principle of universal salvation—without being branded a heretic.

Not that I make the bold claims of St Gregory of Nyssa or St Isaac of Syria (their revised apokatastasis have never been anathematized). Nor do I insist on teaching the daring universalism of Fr. Sergius Bulgakov or David Bentley Hart as doctrine (although their arguments seem airtight).

My own project is far more modest. I ask and now assert that Christian Orthodoxy permits me to hope—permits a position elsewhere called “hopeful inclusivism.” Hopeful inclusivism says that we cannot presume that all will be saved or that even one will be damned. Rather, we put our hope in the final victory and verdict of Jesus Christ, whose mercy endures forever and whose lovingkindness is everlasting.

If you live inside the North American evangeli-bubble, you might assume that every legit Jesus follower on the planet thinks the world is six to ten thousand years old, depending on how you track those old testament genealogies.

You would be wrong.

It turns out that many Christians have come to peace with the contentious piece of theology we refer to as the origins debate.

I am one of those people.

Since the day I was blindsided by a fellow musician in my worship band – a geologist with inside knowledge that didn’t sync with my creationist timeline -I’ve been down more than a few rabbit holes. I am now scraping out a new identity as a recovering creationist. I have a budding fondness for Darwin’s idea, and an expanding sense of wonder in a God who is content (even pleased) to let a universe unfold over billions of years.

What I have learned during my journey is that while many believers are asking questions with their inside voices, they are worried that speaking up is seen is a sign of doubt or rebellion against established orthodoxy. I have also discovered that many people outside the church are surprisingly intrigued by the implications of this conversation and are more than willing to engage.

So today, I am pleased to discuss several unfortunate myths about Christianity and evolution. Hopefully these conversation starters will keep your next Bible study lively.

Editor’s Note: Last Sunday, the nation witnessed a horrific tragedy in Orlando, Florida. Over 50 patrons of a gay nightclub were murdered in the worst mass shooting in US history. In the aftermath of this tragedy, we’ve seen beautiful outpourings of love and solidarity across the country. We’ve also seen many who would place themselves under the “Christian” banner double down on hateful rhetoric and verbally attack the LGBT community.

First, we at Brazen Church want to offer our voice in love and solidarity with the LGBT community. Second, we want to help move the conversation on homosexuality forward by dismantling a common misconception – the idea that the Bible offers a crystal clear take on this issue. The reality is that homosexuality in the Bible is anything but straightforward… but you may not realize that if you read in English.

The following post was written by Dr. Donald Haynes for The United Methodist Reporter ahead of the 2016 General Conference in Portland. Dr. Haynes is a highly respected minister and a longtime writer, and despite coming from a more “conservative” theological stream, this is what he sees when he takes an honest look at scripture.

In the January-February 2016 issue of “Good News” magazine, Thomas Lambrecht wrote a very helpful article in which he presents quite clearly four of the proposals being circulated prior to the 2016 General Conference regarding the ordination, the appointment or the marriage of persons of LGBTQ sexual orientation. Any reader should thank Tom for bringing these into focus for all elected delegates to preview. I respectfully present a response.

Prior to his excellent specificity about potential legislative proposals, Tom wrote, “The root issues are biblical authority–‘will we keep church teaching in line with what the Scriptures say….’? This rather pejorative statement implies that the Scriptures speak with a unilaterally definitive voice on homosexuality. That is a stretch! To my knowledge, there are only seven biblical references to homosexuality. The most frequently quoted is Leviticus 18:21-22 that is in the context of Mosaic cultic laws, most of which we ignore. Most likely, he joins this text with other interpretative voices in Romans 1:26-27, I Corinthians 6:9-10 or even I Timothy 1:8-10. At least these are the passages over which I have more deeply poured and whose interpretations I have researched from biblical commentaries.

For me, there are some major stumbling blocks in making the Bible a manual of jurisprudent specificity rather than holistic principles:

The lineage of our method to thought traces back all the way to our Greco-Roman ancestors – Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates – the greatest thinkers of all time. The term Orthodoxy, or “correct belief”, is tied directly into these conversations of thought that happen to this day within the Christian Church: what do we think? What creeds do we affirm? To what doctrines do we hold?

These questions divide the Church into Catholics and Protestants, Orthodox and New Age, and into every denomination in between. They construct barriers that divide us, restrict us, and label us, until we become nothing, save for the labels that have been passed about behind our backs and under our noses.

There’s a reason that last sentence doesn’t sound biblical. I would suggest that the Bible presents a different reality. It presents a reality that is counter-intuitive to the thoughts and ideas we form on our own: about the world, the text, and the way those two intertwine.